After the Sorting
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Alternate Universe. Supplementary material to 'Saint Potter'. Ronald Bilius Weasley was offered a place in a Hogwarts house but told the Sorting Hat that he just wanted to go home, and now he has to face his family. Warning! Characters who have diverged from canon.


Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. I am not Leslie Charteris. I do not own The Saint.

Note: The following takes place in the wake of the September 1991 sorting at Hogwarts in the Saint Potter universe, and concerns Ronald Bilius Weasley, who begged the Sorting Hat to send him home at the sorting when it came to his turn under the hat. The universe is an alternate one which was impacted by The Saint and in which some characters and situations differ considerably from canon. In this universe James Potter married a grand-daughter of Simon Templar, and Sophie Theresa Potter is known as 'The-Girl-Who-Lived'. This piece is from Ron's point of view and is supplemental to my 'Saint Potter' story.

Further Note: As a reminder, amongst the differences from canon of this universe, as of 1991 Ron's mother, Molly Weasley, is the one with a ministry job, whilst Ron's father, Arthur Weasley, stays at home looking after the house and family (and occasionally fiddling with muggle devices he doesn't understand).

* * *

"So what happened?" Ron's father asked, a mildly concerned look on his face. "We got a message from the deputy headmistress last night saying you'd refused to be sorted and just wanted to go home."

Ron and his father were in a classroom currently empty of anyone but Weasleys, on the morning of September the second, the day after Ron's biggest disaster ever. Ron had been reunited after the sorting with Scabbers, but dined alone on a couple of plates of sandwiches in an office somewhere in the depths of the castle whilst the deputy headmistress inspected trunks in a room next door, prior to being escorted up to a rather spartan guest bedroom (with bathroom) somewhere in a tower and locked in for the night. This morning, Ron had seen an almost heart-stopping scene of a valley flanked with mountains and a mist-shrouded forest out of the barred window of his room, accompanied by the sounds of castle life and a new school year getting underway. A castle house-elf had brought him a tray with grapefruit on it and cold egg-and-cress sandwiches, which was apparently his breakfast, and which he'd been hungry enough to eat, even though he didn't usually like grapefruit. He'd had a bit of time alone with Scabbers (and fed him scraps leftover from his sandwiches), then the deputy headmistress had shown up again, to escort Ron down to an unused classroom, where his dad was waiting for him, and left the Weasleys to it. On this trip, they'd passed by at least two groups of first years puzzling over rough sketch-maps, and another group play-fighting with one another.

Ron and his father were not alone in the classroom, however. Ron's little sister, Ginny (proper name Ginevra, but Ron tended to shorten it, even though that annoyed her no end), was currently sitting in a corner of the classroom, her nose buried firmly in a book. Since Ron wanted to go back home, and since Ron's dad was responsible for looking after Ron's (not yet of Hogwarts' age) sister, Ron's dad had had to bring her to Hogwarts with him. The school would only let Ron leave if a parent or guardian came to collect him, and Ron's mum was busy at work.

"It was a disaster, dad." Ron groaned. "Everything went wrong the moment the train left London. I lost Scabbers, and whilst I was looking for him I ran into Longbottom and some girls he was sitting with, and then someone started a rumour that I was The-Girl-Who-Lived in disguise, then I encountered Malfoy – Draco, that is – and I got in a fight with him and some others, and then two of the girls who were with Longbottom earlier showed up with Percy to break up the fight. And… and I thought that they were Longbottom's pawns, and he'd sent them to corrupt Percy and I grabbed a wand to try and jinx one of the girls, and she pulled her own wand like lightning and disarmed me, and then the head-girl showed up and started handing out detentions. And she kept on piling on more and more on me, saying what a disgrace to my family and the school I was. And the twins had helped me fight Draco, and they got in trouble too and got detentions, after managing to go the whole of last year without getting in trouble, and they pretended that they didn't mind, but that was awful, dad." Ron swallowed and choked to a halt for a moment.

"That wasn't all though, was it?" Ron's father somehow seemed to know there was worse yet to come.

"No… no." Ron stammered. "The train got to Hogsmeade, and one of the castle elves had found Scabbers and I got him back, and we had this boat ride to the castle, which would have been brilliant if one of the girls in my boat hadn't said she thought Scabbers looked as if he had fleas, and then in the castle there was a message that the headmaster himself had heard about how I'd behaved on the train and awarded me extra detentions and an essay. And we were told we had to leave pets and owls behind, in this antechamber, but I needed Scabbers with me for comfort, and I thought nobody would mind, but this girl, Davis, who'd been in the fight with me on the train told on me to the deputy-headmistress and she took Scabbers from me, and told me off for not calling her 'professor' or 'ma'am'. And then we went through for the sorting, and then there was the worst moment of all, because… because the girl…"

"Which girl?" Ron's father asked, gently.

"The girl I'd tried to jinx on the train." Ron said miserably. "And I'd said she was evil, associating with Longbottom and so on. She turned out to be The-Girl-Who-Lived, and she gave me this _look_ when her name was called and it was her turn to be sorted, and I knew then that at Hogwarts I'd always be that boy who on the first ride to Hogwarts tried to attack The-Girl-Who-Lived. She ended up in Slytherin. I don't know if she's gone evil, and my trying to jinx her made that happen, or if she's being a heroine and keeping an eye on the worst of the bad wizards from inside. She's not at all a pompous person like Percy, which is the only other reason a witch or wizard would end up _there_. And the hat offered me Hufflepuff, when it was my turn, but I told it I just wanted to go home."

Ron vaguely noticed that at some point during his account his sister had taken her nose out of her book and started paying attention to the conversation, with that _thoughtful_ stare she sometimes got. The one he'd find outright _creepy_ coming from anyone but his little sister.

His dad in the meantime was _frowning_, and that was bad. Ron knew that when his dad frowned like that he was in trouble. His dad was usually easy-going and absolutely brilliant about everything. Well except for his obsession with strange muggle stuff that he didn't understand nearly so well as mum, and his attempts to charm such items to get them to 'work' how he thought that they should. Ron still had occasional nightmares about the time his father had thought what subsequently turned out to be a 'hair-drier' was in fact some sort of lawn-watering device and charmed it accordingly.

"Sometimes trying to runaway or hide from problems doesn't work, Ron." his father said to him in a tone of mild reproval. "I'm not going to try and force you to stay here at Hogwarts if you don't want to be here, although we both know your mother's going to be disappointed about you not attending." He hardened his tone. "And _I_ am disappointed with you, trying to jinx a girl you'd never met before, simply because you'd seen her with Neville Longbottom and you thought that made her evil. I wouldn't be surprised if she thought that _you_ were evil, attacking her like that. I hope you've noticed that whilst you had been planning on jinxing her, she simply disarmed you. There _will_ be punishments: when we get home, I'm going to take your wand from you and think of a _lot_ of things for you to do by hand, but I'm going to have to discuss exactly what with your mother. And I gather that the deputy-headmistress wants a word with me before we leave – which will probably be about rather more than my collecting your trunk and signing papers to confirm that you'll be going home. I expect she'll want to discuss all the punishments you 'owe' Hogwarts, and what I'm going to do about them?"

It was worse than Ron had thought it would be. His father had said he was _disappointed_. His dad being disappointed with him made Ron feel almost as bad as staying on at Hogwarts would have made him feel.

* * *

Several hours and one walk into Hogsmeade later (Ron's father had insisted that they walk to Hogsmeade to use a floo there, rather than use a school floo to travel home, so that Ron could think about what he'd done with every step of the walk away from Hogwarts), and Ron was back home in The Burrow. As he had promised, Ron's father had taken Ron's wand away from him, and locked it in a box on the mantelpiece, then gone to floo-call Ron's mother at her job.

Meanwhile, Ginny had dragged Ron upstairs to her room. It was clear she wanted an urgent word about something with him.

"So what's she like then?" Ginny demanded. "The Girl-Who-Lived?"

Oh. This must be about _that_ then. Ginny was obsessed with the events of Hallowe'en, 1981, and the attack on Godric's Hollow. Normal girls might have pictures of unicorns or fairies on their bedroom walls. Ron's sister had the results of months of intensive study. There were faded pictures of You-Know-Who and all the Death Eaters who had been known to be involved in the attack, accompanied by pieces of paper scribbled on by Ginny about each one. There were pictures of the house in Godric's Hollow, taken in the wake of the attack. There were pictures of the first aurors and other witches or wizards known to have arrived at the scene after the event (including the huge man Ron had seen last night, Rubeus Hagrid) accompanied by still more of Ginny's scribbled notes.

There was even a picture of James Potter, and multiple clippings from newspapers about him, with lots of things circled and question marks by the dozen.

And there were bits of string all over the place.

Although she'd ignored the muggle relations as well, about the only major thing Ginny _had_ passed over in her researches up until now was The-Girl-Who-Lived herself. For some reason Ginny hadn't ever been remotely interested in any of the stories about reflecting killing curses or heroic sacrifices or incredibly powerful magic or the heroine at the centre of them.

Ginny had a sheet of lined paper out now, though, pencil poised and ready with 'The-Girl-Who-Lived' written at the top. Ginny _knew_ how to use a quill and ink, but found pencils obtained from muggle Britain much simpler and less messy to handle.

(Ron also knew his little sister sometimes surreptitiously experimented with trying to use pencils as surrogate wands, on the basis that they were, after all, basically pieces of wood with another material running through the core. She _had_ once managed to blow a pencil up and cover the ceiling in rainbow coloured goo doing such experiments, after which incident mum and dad had taken all her pencils away from her for a month. That incident had never been repeated.)

"Umm. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. She was dressed like a muggle yesterday. One of those funny caps on, so you couldn't see her scar until she took the cap off to be sorted, and a weird pink jacket." Ron said, his sister scribbling much of this down.

"Wand?" Ginny pressed.

"Don't know." Ron said. "It looked about a foot long, and was something dark. Oh, but she had a wand-sheath for it. Looked to be real goblin work."

He saw his sister write and circle something.

"Back at Hogwarts you said to dad she disarmed you. How was that? I mean how was it like?"

"It was all a blur. It was literally out, thrust, twirl, 'expellythingummy' all in one go." Ron said. "Whilst I was trying to remember how a jelly legs jinx went. It was over in a moment. I didn't have time to work out was happening."

"It looked as if she knew what she was doing?" Ginny frowned.

"Yeah. Definitely." Ron said, feeling gloomy. "I suppose I should have realised then who she was. Fred and George worked it out, I'm sure, but she acted as if she hadn't done anything at all unusual."

More scribbling and frowning from Ginny.

"Did you get her name? When she was sorted? The books and papers can't agree."

"Oh, it was Sophie Theresa Potter." Ron said. "She'd been telling people on the train she was 'Sophie Theresa', I heard, and everyone was looking for a Potter, so just ignored her, but apparently Theresa _is_ her middle name, so it was sort of fair."

Ginny stared at the paper and something she'd just written for a moment then tossed pencil and paper aside and headed straight for the wall to stare intently at the newspaper cuttings about James Potter.

"Her mother was 'Selene Tilde'." Ginny muttered. "S. T. And the same letters again for the daughter. It might be a coincidence but likely not…"

She furrowed her brows, and then turned to look at Ron. "Was there anything else in particular you noticed about her? About who she was with? Apart from Neville Longbottom?"

"Well, Percy came along with her to break up the fight and she was with some other girl then too who she'd been with earlier with Longbottom and who, now I think about it, Percy looked as if he knew already. She looked like just another first year, but I didn't see her afterwards on the boats or at the sorting. But the house-elves said at Hogsmeade that they'd got everyone off the train except for some Snape girl, who must be the caretaker's daughter or something."

Ginny suddenly looked as if she was uncertain of something – or perhaps of a great many somethings.

"I need to write to Percy and the twins by the sound of it." she said. "She's in Slytherin, so Percy should be able to find things out about her." She flashed a brief smile. "Thanks, Ron." She paused. "I hope mum and dad aren't _too_ hard on you, but to be honest, you do pretty silly things some of the time."

Ginny collected a pencil and started staring at her wall intently again, absentmindedly tapping her teeth with the pencil as she did so. She was muttering something about 'distinctly Hufflepuff to judge a book by its cover', which Ron guessed was her verdict of his own performance the previous day.

Ron took it that he was 'dismissed' and escaped.

His sister had weird moods at times and was a budding genius, he was sure. The _twins_ bounced ideas off her sometimes when they were home for a holiday, not because she necessarily would be expected to understand what they were going on about (she was three years younger than them after all) but because sometimes she asked questions which caused their eyes to light up and one or the other of them to slap her on the back or affectionately ruffle her hair.

Ginny would do fine at Hogwarts when she started next year, Ron was sure. Meanwhile, he had an immediate future to look forward to which almost certainly involved de-gnoming the garden and trying to keep his father from setting fire to his 'shed' with what would later turn out to be some muggle cooking utensil…

* * *

Author Notes (subject to update):

This is, as I noted, set in an alternate universe. It seemed to me that following Ron's catastrophic trip to Hogwarts, it might be a good idea to give his perspective on it, the day after.

The deputy-headmistress isn't interested in making Ron's remaining time at Hogwarts particularly comfortable, since he _did_ misbehave on the Express, and there are forty-nine first years who _do_ want to be at the school. (Although Ron's night may be assumed to be noticeably more comfortable than that of Zacharias Smith who tried to stamp on the Sorting Hat in a tantrum after it refused to sort him and declared it was throwing him out of the school.)

Ron in this particular universe has a rather simplistic view of some things. His view of Slytherins is an example of this. (Note that before the events of the previous night, he probably would have said all Slytherins were either evil or pompous, and before his brother Percy was sorted in Slytherin some years earlier, he simply thought they were all evil.)


End file.
